


Don't Look Back in Anger

by orphan_account



Category: Captain Underpants Series - Dav Pilkey, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017)
Genre: I am so dang proud of this, Oh my god this was so fun, this was such an absolute ride
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-30 17:11:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13956228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In the quiet, the crickets seemed so loud, until George finally turned to Harold and mumbled, “But...do you think he knows about…?”“I-” Harold was taken aback, “I never thought about it, honestly.”---George and Harold discuss their childhood and, in particular, whatever happened to Captain Underpants.





	Don't Look Back in Anger

**Author's Note:**

> This was SO FUN!  
> So this is a gift to BioLizardBoils, who helped me with a small project. They asked for me to do a piece on George and Harold discussing their time at Jerome Horwitz Elementary as well as their adventures with Captain. It was such a fun prompt- I really loved doing this. 
> 
> Some music that I listened to while writing it  
> Champaign Supernova- Bio suggested it, and it is so good and fitting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI-5uv4wryI  
> Don't Look Back in Anger- I was listening to this around midway through, and it's where I got the title for the work. I also think it fits in well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmpRLQZkTb8
> 
> Ah...I hope you guys enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it! 
> 
> Cheers!

      “Do you ever think about it?”

      “About what?”

      George jerked his head in the direction of the house they were passing, but said nothing else, keeping to his silence by picking at the skin around his thumbs as he watched Harold’s face shift through several different expressions.

      “I don’t understand.”

      He sighed, “Us, as kids. Do you ever think about it?”

      “Oh, oh all the time,” said Harold, smiling, “God, I’ve still got dreams about some of the stuff we did.”

      “The springs under the seats?”

      “The gum on the basketballs?”

      “All the goop-”

      “The projector screens-”

      “The library books! Do you-?”

      “Oh yeah! And that tiger!”

      “Oh that tiger was crazy!”

      They snickered quietly, Harold biting the knuckle of his thumb to keep from being too loud. It was late, after all, the streetlamps lighting one by one as the summer sun set far beyond the horizon. In the still of the evening, crickets fiddled softly, and fireflies dotted the greener lawns in the neighborhood they found themselves in now, wandering in great loops through suburbia. It was one of the older developments, the houses still looking familiar to them, the colours comforting even though the trees were much taller than they had been once. All the old residence had moved away, or died, and now, the grass they had so carefully manicured was taken over by plastic villages littered with small playskool houses and peddle cars. Trespassers here, in this neighborhood full of small residence, they did not wish to wake them, least their voices carried in through the open windows and made it into tiny ears.

      They knew the struggle of keeping small children in bed.

      Funny, how the times change.

      “But,” and here, George became quieter still, “Do you- do you ever think of…”

      Harold’s eyes went wide as he stopped in his tracks, “Oh...Wow, no. You know, part of me always kinda thought-”

      “It was a dream…”

      “Or an elaborate fantasy, yeah,” he nodded, “We were...we were so easy to drift off into our own heads up in that treehouse.”

      “Yeah...I told you when my parents moved south, after I sold the house, the new people tore it down, right?”

      Harold wrapped an arm around George, “Yeah...you told me.”

      George gave a shaky laugh, “God, that hurt more than anything else. I’m glad we got all our stuff out of there before we left.”

      “That rug, man,” Harold chuckled, “Your mom paid an arm and a leg for that. Lasted us through the apartment-”

      “Lasting us now in the workshop-”

      “It’s a damn good rug.”

      “Everything else was rotted when I went up,” mumbled George, eyes not quite focusing, “All...all mossy and- and some of the beams had fallen out. I can’t blame them for tearing it down.”

      “...Still hurts though.”

      “Still hurts.”

      They stood looking into the concrete, into the sky, saying nothing as they waited for the right words to come to them. George eventually wrapped an arm around Harold, pointing with his free hand to the house he had gestured towards before, “But...but I sometimes wonder…”

      The home they were both looking at now was a split level with faded yellow siding and blue shutters. Around the perimeter, a knee-high white picket fence had been put up and lined on the inside with miniature rhododendrons, who’s pink blooms blazed brightly in the dying light. It was the only house on the block to not have toys littering the grass, or dog poop, but there was a cat door affixed firmly to a corner of the garage, and a dogwood that seemed to be on the cusp of blooming in the middle of the grass.  

      Harold blinked, processing what was in front of him, “He lives there now?”

      “Yeah.”

      “What made him move?”

      “Dude, he married the lunch lady.”

      “The alien?”

      “Yeah.”

      Harold gave a low whistle, “Oh snap, news to me….Do you think he-?”

      “Harold-”

      “No no-”

      “Harold, don’t make it weird-”

      “Just- do you think he knows?”

      “I’d...I’d guess so?”

      “...Huh.”  

      In the quiet, the crickets seemed so loud, until George finally turned to Harold and mumbled, “But...do you think he knows about…?”

      “I-” Harold was taken aback, “I never thought about it, honestly.”

      “...He had to have figured it out.”

      “You really think so?”

      “Harold, we- I mean- it was years worth of time…”

      “Yeah, but he’s- you know.”

      “That doesn’t mean he’s THAT stupid.”

      “Why are you even asking me,” Harold turned to George, brow furrowed, mouth souring at the corners, “Even if he doesn’t know, what, you want to just walk up and tell him? ‘Oh yeah, hey Mr. Krupp. Remember us? Those kids you hated? Yeah, ha, funny story, guess what we did to you-’”

      “No-Harold-”

      “‘-We turned you into Captain Underpants and used you to battle our own self-made monsters for over four years.’”

      George winced, “Don’t put it like that, god-”

      “It’s what we did though.”

      “I know, I know.”

      They turned back to look at the house just as a light went on inside. With a sharp inhale, Harold clung to George tightly, and both watched as a shadow fell across the curtains, broad and familiar, before moving out out sight. In its wake, a cat jumped up upon the sill, turning once in a circle before nestling down in its own fat and fur to eye the men standing at the end of the street.

      George let out the breath he didn’t realize he was holding, and Harold slowly released his grip on his friend’s shoulder as he whispered, “I mean, clearly he turned out okay.”

      “Did he though?” murmured George.

      “Man, what has gotten into you?” Harold let go of George then, crossing his arms as he looked him up and down, “Don’t go Dickinson on me- don’t go spinning off in your own head. What’s going on?”

      “Harold-” George closed his eyes, swallowing as he tried to steal his nerves, “We were real  assholes as kids.”

      “All kids are kinda assholes. My kids are assholes, your kids are assholes-”

      “We could have killed him.”

      “We were ten! We had no concept of mortality!”

      “That’s not an excuse. We should have been kinder, we should have tried to take our time and- and think. That’s not an excuse-”

      “No, it’s not,” Harold grabbed George then, turning him away from the house so that the two were eye to eye, “We don’t have an excuse, and I’m not gonna knock that, but buddy, we also had no idea what we were doing. It was a harmless joke gone wrong. There were a lot of other people in that school who would have done way worse.”

      “It wasn’t a joke,” George pulled away, gesturing earnestly, his hands flying, “That wasn’t a joke.”

      “You can’t tell me you honestly thought it would work when you-”

      “I don’t know what I thought! You told me to do something and I just-”

      “And you just did the first thing that came to mind and spoke with great authority and poof. I was there, George, I remember, and I still think neither of us are to blame. He was- god, he was…” Harold shuddered, arms pulling tightly around him, “There’s a part of me that still hates him, even if...even if he was Captain Underpants, somehow, somewhere underneath all of...that.”

      George hesitated before reaching out to hold Harold, “We weren’t...the easiest kids to work with though.”

      “Just because we weren’t cookie-cutter doesn’t mean we should have been treated like- friggin’- a badly behaved hamster.”

      “You can’t blame him for not understanding, nobody did back then.”

      “That’s not an excuse.”

      “No, but, and to quote you just now, they also had no idea what they were doing. Our parents didn’t even know what they were doing.”

      “Yeah, but they loved us.”

      “That doesn’t mean they understood us.”

      “God, why are you being like this?” Harold shook George’s hands from him, arms going into the air as he grew louder, “Why? It’s over! It’s done!”

      “But it’s not done. I keep living those years in my head at night Harold, I keep thinking-”

      “Don’t. Don’t do that to yourself. We both did and saw and said a lot of things, but that doesn’t- that doesn’t make us bad people. We’re thirty years old- I think the other two thirds of our lives greatly make up for the one we screwed up!”

      “I didn’t say we screwed up!”

      “Then what are you trying to say?”

      “I don’t know!” George yelled, hands balling into fists on either side of his head as he stared at Harold with wide eyes, “I don’t know what I’m trying to say- I just-”

      The door of the yellow house opened.

      George grabbed Harold, yanking him to stand behind one of the streetlamps as they watched a familiar shape step out into the dusk with them. It was too dark to see his face, but they knew him, knew his posture, the way he angled his hands into his pants pockets as he breathed in the night. When the figure rolled his shoulders, they could even hear the familiar crack of arthritis before he stepped off his front stoop and started down the pathway towards the sidewalk.

      “Shit,” whispered Harold.

      The man froze.

      George gripped Harold’s hand tightly, squeezing so hard Harold lost feeling in his fingertips for a moment, as slowly, slowly, Mr. Krupp turned to face them.

      It was too dim to see much, but they knew it was him, and they were sure that he knew it was them, too. The old principal’s face was lined, the nasolabial crease so deep that the shadows could be seen from where they stood, and the furrows of his brow looked like the riverbeds of Mars. He didn’t have his hairpiece on, in fact, he didn’t have much of his old regalia on, save for the soft leather moccasins on his feet and an unironed dress shirt he had tucked loosely into a set of weathered jeans. The hardness, the edges, that had seemed to cut him into their memory weren’t there now, and the rolling anger that had once emanated from him was gone. Ultimately, they were left staring at a man who just looked...tired...and yet-

      In the silence, the crickets played on, the lightning bugs blinked in and out of existence, the sun slipped lower in the sky, and another distant streetlamp turned on. In the silence, twenty years seemed to come to a head and in that moment, time seemed to stretch, and stretch, and stretch, until-

      The man raised a hand in acknowledgment. He said nothing and made no other gesture. After a moment, George raised a hand in reply, and Harold, too, once George elbowed him in the ribs.

      And then, just like that, Mr. Krupp walked away, down the sidewalk in the other direction, into the night.

      George took a deep breath, and Harold shook as he sighed, muttering, “I don’t ever want to come to this neighborhood again, ever. Absolutely ever.”

      “He looks like he’s alright.”

      “I like how that’s the one thing you’re worried about. We could have died.”

      “We weren’t gonna die.”

      “Well, it felt like it to me.”

      “Do you think he remembers us?” George asked, facing Harold, “Like, at all? I can’t imagine how many kids passed through that elementary school.”

      “Yeah, but how many kids caused as much chaos as we did?”

      “...But it all turned out okay in the end, right? Like you said… it- it turned out okay. We’re okay. He- well, he looks...okay. Everything's alright, right?”  

      “I-,” Harold hesitated, looking at the little yellow house, down the long and sidewalk where their old principal had disappeared, before turning to face his friend, and for a moment, it felt like he and George were ten again.

      For a moment, the world felt very large and wild again, and he felt very small, and yet…

      “Yeah...Yeah I think- I think everything turned out alright. I think it’s okay.”

      George nodded, and Harold clapped a hand on his shoulder, doing his best to give a comforting smile as George mumbled, “I wonder sometimes if- but honestly, I don’t know how any of this could have ended up differently, and...I’m not sure I would have been...as okay as I am right now, because I am- I am okay. We’re all okay.”

      “We’re all okay,” Harold repeated, nodding, “But can we please- can we _please_ \- get out of this neighborhood. I can’t handle being here anymore.”

      “Oh hell yeah man,” George grinned, chuckling even while he wiped his eyes, “Yeah, of course. Consider us gone,”

      And with that, they continued on their way, into the long and winding summer night, without ever looking back.


End file.
